


Watch

by SLWalker



Series: Midnight Blue [10]
Category: Midnight Blue - Fandom, due South
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-08
Updated: 2012-04-08
Packaged: 2017-11-03 06:12:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/378192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SLWalker/pseuds/SLWalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1993: All Cindy could do was watch.  Sequel to Mom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Watch

The hardest part was watching.

It always was. Cindy knew that. She was witness to it, over the years; layers of watching, stacked like nesting dolls. Patients watching doctors, families watching patients, Cindy watching families. Watching the ripple effect, as the bad news came, and the shell-shocked looks and the desperation in their eyes; there was little her own comforting words and gentle charge-taking could do, but she did it. Sometimes a little was all that was needed. Sometimes it wasn't; sometimes they needed far more than she could ever provide.

Mike wasn't really different from them. He looked just as shell-shocked and desperate. He walked around in a fog and she had to repeat questions to get an answer, and sometimes he'd be in the middle of an answer, then trail off like he had forgotten what he was saying. Sometimes he just paced the livingroom, hands in his hair, like every step he took was bargaining to buy his mother more time, a cure, a reprieve.

Cindy knew the statistics. The likelihood of her living even another two months was slim.

He wasn't really different from them; he spent money he was saving for new curling gear to pay for a lawn service in Swan River to go and take care of the outside of his parents' house, a strange look of quiet defiance on his face as he called. He ended up at the library one day, checked out medical books that were way over his head, and sat at the kitchen table trying to gain some kind of control by arming himself with knowledge. Mike hadn't even had a library card before. He drove back twice more to Minitonas, and came back each time coiled up and dazed and upset and silent and barely touchable.

He had to know. Mike was smart. Clever. He could look at a crime scene and then later he would tell her exactly how he figured out who it was who had committed that crime. He could spot sketchy body language on a perp from three blocks away in the rain. He could file away a million little facts in his head and recall them at will, when it came to the town, who was trouble, who wasn't, who might be, what residence held that trouble, which person was being investigated for fraud, which ones were squeaky clean, who his best informants were, who couldn't be trusted with the truth. He lived and breathed to maintain the right.

Except, there was no right here.

He had to know that. That there was no right. That there was no _wrong_. That you couldn't investigate pancreatic cancer and collect evidence against it and charge it and appear in court to convict it. That the facts in this case wouldn't change the reality of it.

But he wasn't really different from them. Just as shell-shocked and desperate. Except for one thing.

He went through it so God-awfully, determinedly alone.

All she could do was watch.

 

 

The funeral happened about when Cindy had expected it to. She had never been to Minitonas before. It was a lot smaller than Nipawin, but not so very different looking. She put on a black dress, subdued makeup. Mike wore a black suit. The five hours in the car was spent in silence.

Cindy was used to that. But never moreso than she had been the past month and a half.

When her grandmother had died, her family came together; talked, cried, sometimes even laughed. Clung together in the backyard of Mom and Dad's house after the funeral, and she hurt, she hurt terribly, but there was so much comfort at being home. With these people who had shared life with this woman. Holding each other up through the loss. In crying in her mother's arms. In crying into her father's shoulder. In the soft words from her father to his congregation. To being surrounded by so much love that even the pain was warm; living pain, loving pain, the kind that came when you were so very grateful for the person's life, even when you lost them.

It was warm and bright outside, but she had never been to a funeral that was so cold as this.

Mike's mother had friends. His father was there, too, along with a number of other members of the community. There were hugs and quiet conversations between people. There were tears. But something was missing. She couldn't even name it, really. She could only feel it.

She sat through the service. There was no gathering after. She only heard Mike quietly say he was sorry to his father; heard the equally quiet reply in turn. That was it. They went and got back in the car, and it was five hours of silence all the way back.

It was only after they had been home and Mike had turned in that she realized that neither of the Chase men had cried.

 

 

Mike didn't pace anymore after the funeral was over. He didn't check out any more books from the library, didn't order any more lawn service and didn't go back to Minitonas. He still didn't quite seem to hear her, still walked around in a fog, and sometimes she would look at him and see just how _lost_ he was. He was quiet, and subdued and she fielded a couple of calls from Russ, who was worried. Turned out Mike never told Russ.

She had thought that he would have had to know. That there was no right. No wrong. But he didn't know.

If he ever did break down in tears, she never saw it.

Just as God-awfully, determinedly alone.

And still all she could do was watch.

 

 

She had been spooning up to his back ever since that first night he came home looking like he had been hit by a car, months ago now. He would come in from work, she would wake up when he came to bed, and when his breathing finally went even and she knew he was asleep, she would get as close as humanly possible and wrap an arm around his side. Nine times out of ten, when she woke in the morning to go to work, she was still holding onto him.

Nine times out of ten, when she woke up in the morning, he was curled up with his arms tucked tight around his own midsection like he had to hold himself together even in his sleep.

One morning, she woke up and he had her hand. When she tried to ease it loose -- reluctantly -- he held on tighter.

"Hey," she whispered, sleep-cracked.

He let go only long enough to turn to face her and wrap around her, instead, holding on tight until the second alarm on her clock went off.

She never did figure out what exactly was going through his head all that time. Or how he felt, aside what was so clear on his face. What had been missing at the funeral for his mother that hadn't been at her family's funeral for her grandmother. But he finally went fishing, and he finally started talking again in something more than single words or trailed off sentences, and he started smiling again. Years later, she would look back on that more than once and, older and wiser, would see things long after it was all said and done.

But for now, finally, she could do more than watch.


End file.
